Change the background of the login screen

Question

I installed Ubuntu Studio 15.10 and upon that:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Now on the login screen, I have the default brownish Ubuntu default background.

I tried this as root:

sudo xhost +SI:localuser:lightdm
sudo su lightdm -s /bin/bash
gsettings set com.canonical.unity-greeter background /usr/share/backgrounds/Tranquil_by_Pat_David.jpg

But this didn't change anything.

Also starting the unity-control-center as user lightdm and changing the background there had no effect.
I also checked the rights of /usr/share/backgrounds/Tranquil_by_Pat_David.jpg which are globally readable.

Maybe a bit duplicate indeed, cause the answer was in one of the low voted answers: http://askubuntu.com/a/360008/34298 — rubo77, Nov 05 '15 at 11:08

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy · Answer 1 · 2016-01-29T14:10:35.787

23

The proper way of changing default unity-greeter background is through overriding glib-2.0 schema, as specified in the Lightdm Ubuntu Wiki

The steps are as follows:

Create /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/10_unity_greeter_background.gschema.override file with the following contents:
```
[com.canonical.unity-greeter]
draw-user-backgrounds=false
background='/foo/wallpaper.png'
```
Run sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas
Reboot or login to TTY2 (accessed by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 ) and run sudo service lightdm restart

This has been tested on my Ubuntu 14.04

Update: November 17 2015

I have put together a script that simplifies the process of changing the greeter background. It has been tested in its final form on two versions of Ubuntu, 14.04 LTS (actual physical machine ) and 15.10 (Virtual Machine ) It can be found in my GitHub

edited Jan 29 '16 at 14:10

answered Nov 05 '15 at 16:19

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy

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Thanks for your script! It, however, produces this error when running. – orschiro Oct 06 '16 at 06:21
1

@orschiro you have to call script with path to file. For example, sudo ./chgreeterbg.sh /home/user/Picture s/wallpaper1.png – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Oct 06 '16 at 06:31
That works, thanks! Maybe you want to add this to your answer? – orschiro Oct 06 '16 at 07:10
After running your script and rebooting, my font settings have changed. Do you know how I can restore them? – orschiro Oct 06 '16 at 07:20
And after boot, I now get this error message. Can this be related to the changes due to your script? – orschiro Oct 06 '16 at 11:02
@orschiro The script doesn't deal with fonts, so i don't thing that's related. Use Unity Tweak Tool to reset your fonts. I don't know about the second error you're getting, but i doubt it's related also – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Oct 06 '16 at 16:11
Using Unity Tweak Tool to reset helped. Thank you Serg! – orschiro Oct 07 '16 at 05:15
2

This also works for Ubuntu 16.04. Be careful about typos - I had a typo in the schema name within the .gschema.override file, which is the part between the brackets [ ], and as a result it was not properly loading. Once I fixed that I had the correct background. – jropella May 09 '17 at 08:49
Yup, works quite well on 16.04, i still use my script regularly – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy May 09 '17 at 10:20

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 05 '15 at 11:06

It seems like all the gsettings have no effect in Ubuntu 15.10, (maybe because I installed Ubuntu Studio with xfce4 first).

I solved it by adding this line to /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf:

background=/usr/share/backgrounds/Tranquil_by_Pat_David.jpg

or in one sudo command:

sudo su -c 'echo "background=/usr/share/backgrounds/Tranquil_by_Pat_David.jpg">>/etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter.conf'

rubo77 · Answer 3 · 2019-09-28T07:49:39.973

Shotwell

For just the basic wallpaper changing feature, you don’t need to install any software, just shotwell.

Just launch the pre-installed Shotwell photo manager, choose the pictures you need (you may need to import them first), then go to Files -> Set as Desktop Slideshow. Click "on lockscreen".

Finally set the time interval in next dialog as desired and done!

source: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2018/07/4-wallpaper-changer-ubuntu-18-04/

Note: This does not work for the login screen any more in Ubuntu 19.04, but still for the dektop background.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 08 '16 at 20:09

0

The non coder way is to use Ubuntu Tweak. Still available per the method listed in this answer.

answered Nov 08 '16 at 20:09

Organic Marble

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Change the background of the login screen

4 Answers4

Shotwell

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